AMD Phenom II 810 & 720 BE Processor Dry Ice Overclocking

Phenom II X3 720 BE Overclocking

With a new processor installed in the frosty ASUS M4A79T Deluxe motherboard we kept our fingers crossed that something higher than 4.1GHz could be reached.

The AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition processor faired much better with Dry Ice cooling since the multiplier could be increased and the CPU votage was able to go up to 1.90V in the BIOS since ASUS allows for higher voltages on the Black Edition processors. After playing around with the HT reference clock frequency and multiplier we managed to reach 4590MHz from the 2800MHz processor. This is 200MHz shy of a 2GHz overclock and is what we expect from Dry Ice cooling!

After the Arctic Silver thermal compound thawed out enough for the pot to be removed there was a layer of ice around all around the CPU socket, but the motherboard was fine even after running with all the ice buildup. That means that we will have to revisit dry ice cooling down the road, but for now we are out of dry ice and have other articles that need to be written! It is confirmed that AMD Phenom II processors don’t have a cold bug as we were running around -50C, with no problems at all. Looks like the old overclocking friendly AMD processors are back and it is likely a fair number of AMD enthusaists will be back as well.